AIRLINES CANCEL SOME FLIGHTS OVER 5G IN U.S.
Carriers that rely mainly on Boeing 777 warned of interference with equipment
Some flights to and from the U.S. were canceled on Wednesday even after AT&T and Verizon scaled back the rollout of high-speed wireless service that could interfere with aircraft technology that measures altitude.
International carriers that rely heavily on the wide-body Boeing 777, and other Boeing aircraft, canceled flights or switched to different planes following warnings from the Federal Aviation Administration and the Chicago-based plane maker.
Airlines that fly only or mostly Airbus jets, including Air France and Ireland’s Aer Lingus, seemed relatively unaffected by the new 5G service.
Airlines had canceled more than 250 flights by midafternoon Wednesday, or 3 percent of the U.S. total, according
to FlightAware. That was far less disruptive than during the Christmas and New Year’s travel season, when a peak of 3,200, or 13 percent, of flights were canceled on Jan. 3 due to winter storms and workers out sick with COVID-19.
A trade group for the industry, Airlines for America, said cancellations weren’t as bad as feared because telecom providers agreed to temporarily reduce the rollout of 5G near dozens of airports while industry and the government work out a longer-term solution.
At O’Hare International Airport in Chicago, Sudeep Bhabad said his father-in-law’s flight to India was canceled.
“They have to resolve this problem,” Bhabad said. “It would have been a lot better if they had resolved it way before and we knew this in advance, instead of, like, finding out when we are here at the airport.”
Similar mobile networks have been deployed in more than three dozen countries, but there are key differences in how the U.S. networks are designed that raised concern of